Partitioning has improved with each new version of SQL Server. From partitioned views in SQL Server 7.0 through partition table parallelism in SQL Server 2008. With SQL Server 2012, we are now allowed to even create up to a 15K partition on a single table. More »

This free ebook from Red Gate Software will take you from the fundamentals of Statistics, Cost Estimation, Index Selection, and the Execution Engine, and guide you through the inner workings of the Query Optimization process, and throws in a pragmatic look at Parameterization and Hints along the way. More »

Editorial - All Flash

I was reading a piece recently that was titled: Switch Your Databases to Flash Storage Now or You're Doing It Wrong. It's a provocative piece, one that has lots of strong comments about the author's style and claims. It's from the CTO of Aerospike, a NoSQL database, and it tries to compare the bottleneck of disks to memory to the network, with the conclusion that your money is better spent on faster SSD drives than tons of RAM.

I don't know if that's true for NoSQL databases, many of which want to run in memory, but I do think there's something here for SQL Server installations. Many of us do have smaller databases, which are much smaller than 1TB. At those sizes, it does make sense these days to look at an SSD solution for your database. At least for tempdb, now that the MTBF of many SSD vendors is large enough to handle the load. Even if you had to replace a tempdb SSD every year, I'd think the performance improvement would make the investment worthwhile.

Technology is changing for data professionals, especially for SQL Server administrators and developers. We are seeing the platform grown and expand, and the changes in what SQL Server allows us to do, and the changes in cost, mean that we should re-evaluate how we approach our systems. Hardware constantly improves, and some of these changes can be a better short term investment than spending a tremendous amount of development and testing time to improve things.

In the long run learning to write better code, and choosing better indexes are great solutions, but they'll work well with faster storage, which might buy you the time to improve your skills.

Optimize your queries—and obtain simple and elegant solutions to a variety of problems—using window functions in Transact-SQL. Led by T-SQL expert Itzik Ben-Gan, you’ll learn how to apply calculations against sets of rows in a flexible, clear, and efficient manner. Ideal whether you’re a database administrator or developer, this practical guide demonstrates ways to use more than a dozen T-SQL querying solutions to address common business tasks.

SQL Server Hardware will provide the fundamental knowledge and resources you need to make intelligent decisions about choice, and optimal installation and configuration, of SQL Server hardware, operating system and the SQL Server RDBMS.

Pick up your copy of this great book from MVP Glenn Berry at Amazon today.

Fantasy football 2012
- Only 2.5 short months to football, can you believe it? I'm not ready, hardly feels like it's summer time yet.
You...

Talking baseball
- Okay, a topic that has NOTHING to do with SQL . . .
Came across [url=http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic447796-4-1.aspx]this link[/url] describing the SSC point scoring descriptions,...

Today's Random Word!
- HI
When you woke up today, or logged-onto Opera Forums, you may have had a dream, a thought, a scene...

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